Hello everyone,

I'm reaching out to the community for help with preserving railroad history. I'm looking for public domain recordings of two old songs about streetcars. These recordings are important for capturing and maintaining the historical significance of streetcar culture.

If you have the capability to make these recordings, or know someone who does, please consider helping out. The sheet music for the songs is available via the links below. Your contribution would be invaluable in keeping this aspect of history alive.

[Link to Sheet Music 1]
https://picryl.com/amp/media/street-car-2
[Link to Sheet Music 2]
https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.musi ... 2&st=image

Thank you for your support

I can read music, and I read through some of these verses, and I think there is a reason we don't know these songs today.

Here is a real trolley song:

https://youtu.be/HPpWQzl-AQ8?si=qIBSYJLF9pyNIsqz

I believe that this song--"Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley"--qualifies as traction's version of/answer to "I've Been Working On the Railroad"--the folk song EVERYONE knows that has utterly NOTHING to do with the purported subject matter.

As an aside, that was the song "Rosie O'Donnell" was singing in The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror X when the Y2k "disaster" actually happened and the "smart" people were loaded onto a rocket ship to safety:



It was implied "Rosie's" singing was so awful as to prompt Homer and Bart's choice of ending......

The trolley song is well known well documented and many examples of the recording exist. Also both the song itself and any recordings of it are copyrighted. Here are the songs that's in the public domain but the recording is copyrighted https://youtu.be/6_k7sv9qN7c?feature=shared I am working on collecting old public domain train in trolley songs (trolley songs aren't as common) to play at the Museum I volunteer at and give away to patrons via our virtual WiFi e-library. And for all the purest to say they don't like train music playing at the train museums because it's not authentic. I plan to have the music played through an old radio that I've modified and have old timey announcements and ads, because while having train music being played in a caboose it's not how things were having somebody listening to a radio into caboose just happens to be playing train songs should satisfy those purest.

How about "Take the A Train"? It runs in the Eighth Avenue Subway in Manhattan, serving Penn Station, opening in 1932. Connect for Grand Central at Times Square, easily faster than a taxi. It is the signature song of Duke Ellington.

It's not a trolley but it's electric urban transportation at its best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY

Phil Mulligan

Suggestion:

Find a music historian specializing in late 19th century and/or early 20th century American songs.

I do have plenty of Public Domaine Song recordings already. And would be more than willing to share my collection with any of you guys so you can play them at your organization or even burn them to CD and sell them at your gift shop. What I'm looking for remembers on the site who can play a piano and or sing to perform these pieces that I found And be willing to release the recording they make into the public domain.

RCD,

There is this gem from page 7 of Frank Rowsome's Trolley Car Treasury (McGraw Hill, 1956).

The Song of the Trolley by Roy L. McCardell.

I am coming, I am coming, hark you hear my motor humming,
For the trolley’s come to conquer, so you cannot keep it back;
And “Zip”! the sparks are flashing, as the car goes onward dashing
While the wheels are whirring smoothly along a perfect track.

‘Tis vain then to delay me, for you cannot stop or stay me,
Though old fogies fought against me, for I “went too fast”, they said;
And they talked of death and danger to the native and the stranger --
Oh! a frightful state they were in from my wire overhead.

Yes, it seems the trolley shocked them -- for right and left I knocked them,
And I made them grow much wiser in their day.
So, at last they’ve learned their folly and stopped fooling with the trolley:
Now when they hear me coming it’s a case of clear the way.

I have harnessed nature’s forces, I’ve freed the mules and horses,
I have helped the toiling thousands to new ways to earn their bread;
Then, as civilization’s factor, I will laugh at each detractor
And keep on doing business at the same old stand instead.

Hear me whizzing through the highways -- see me brightening up the byways,
Annihilating distance as I merry speed along;
I bring new life and faces to old sleeping towns and places
And a million homes are brighter for the music of my song.

The business world’s my debtor, ‘twill ne’er find servant better,
For I’ve wakened up a nation and prosperity’s at hand;
See the future that’s before me, ‘tis in vain you would ignore me,
For the voice of the trolley is heard all through the land.

I’ve no palace car or sleeper, but I carry people cheaper,
And I bring the breath of country to the toilers of the town;
I increase the mail facilities -- freight carrying abiliities
Are among my many virtues and I cannot be kept down.

I laugh to scorn resistance and all thoughts of time and distance,
The embodiment of Progress, hear me hustling near and far
In the van of civilization, and a most apt illustration
Of how commerce has successfully hitched its wagon to a star.

Yes, I’m coming, I am coming, don’t you hear my motor humming?
For the trolley’s here to conquer and you cannot keep it back;
And “Zip”! the sparks are flashing as the car goes onward dashing
Yes the trolley’s come and conquered, so look out! and clear the track!

There is a trolley song for the worse trolley accident that occurred in Kingsland, IN. I found the information at the Library in Columbus, IN (if memory serves me correctly)

Do you have this site?

https://oldtime.radio/

Some of this may be public domain, but proceed with caution:

https://archive.org/search?query=streetcar+music

Always entertaining, sometimes useful:

https://clickamericana.com/#growMeSearch=trolley

Note the sheet music for one I’d never heard of.

Library of Congress has two very old recordings:

https://www.loc.gov/audio/?q=trolley